Business Intelligence: NetSuite the Place to Start

While we could read into the topic of this entry a second meaning, with a slightly derogatory sense, what I am meaning here is the first and more powerful meaning -- "intelligence" -- new information, especially about recent events and happenings. We might also think back to war time and consider "intelligence" in its more secretive sense as well. However, in a business sense, the only reason why such information might be "secret" is that no body just by simply looking at information could deduce or contrive certain meanings and understandings without some good tools of handling and analysing data.

There are the examples, perhaps somewhat apocryphal, of the WalMart intelligence gathering with their computer data and analysis tools. Through data mining our good guys from WalMart found out through analysis that males often purchase a carton of beer and a pack of diapers together -- two items that shop keepers would hardly be aware of as being items that would be bought together. So to aid in the sales process and to capitalize on what was now had become known, WalMart stores were instructed to place these items together in the one place.

Software developers, business people and industry leaders have all developed an understanding of the power of Business Intelligence. If you do a search in Google of the term "business intelligence" you will find that there are more than 60 different suppliers with "business intelligence" software: Cognos, SAS, OpenSource, and more. What is more there is the "business intelligence pipeline", "business intelligence processes", "business intelligence analysis" -- you get the picture. There is just such a complex array of solutions, concepts, systems, examples that now we have "business intelligence consultants".

Seemingly, one of the reasons business intelligence is not more widely used is that this whole arena is now so complex that business people do not know how to make sense of this all.

I do know that NetSuite is the final answer to business intelligence, but simply because NetSuite compels a business to record in database form loads more information than would normally be kept in one database NetSuite is a great place to start building intelligence. Business Intelligence is not simply regurgitating data, nor is it simply the summary of data. Rather Business Intelligence is locating facts that initially surprise people working in the business and can lead to adoption of strategies to improve performance, profitability, or operations.

In my book, I think having the one system to combine back-office and front-office data those operating NetSuite are in a more likely place to be able to gain business intelligence than those operating disparate systems. So for me, the place to start developing business intelligence is in using the tools provided in NetSuite to start learning about our business.

A Zen Garden in A Fast Company

I bought a Zen Garden over the weekend. You know -- the sand tray with a small amount of sand, eight little rocks, and two types of rakes to make patterns in the sand -- thingy. Interesting to play with for awhile. And already, even after doodling with it for just a short while, I have developed a paranoia that someone is going to come along and spoil the great little garden I have toiled over. And there after returning to my desk I see someone has drawn the rake through the whole thing and the rocks are displaced and - - - -

I suppose we can learn, and should learn as a Fast Company, that nothing stays the same. The only constant we have is change: we have new potential customers to work with everyday, the economic climate changes quite rapidly, people leave the business, and others are hired. Smart employees in a Fast Company need not be rattled with change; in fact a smart employee must take change in his/her stride, neither welcoming change nor being frustrated with change. For a Fast Company change just is -- it is the way it is.

That was perhaps one of the earliest frustrations I had with NetSuite when starting to use it -- nothing every seemed to stay the same. I would set up a nice neat way of doing something and then a decision by someone else in the company cause me to have to change the way that I accomplished the same neat thing. What I didn't realise, but now see as an excellent feature of NetSuite is that NetSuite is so flexible that it can change as a business needs to change when experiencing high growth. If a new partnership is negotiated, a new partnership view can be created to allow our new partners to see their part of the new marketing and sales activities within our organization; should a new activity be mooted, we can go into the database and draw reports that may provide us with a clue as to how well that activity might be received by our customers and so on . . .

NetSuite is a little like a Zen Garden in a Fast Company -- it is a constantly changing database of information about the business -- and it can be used by people within the business to record the past and a sandbox to plot out potential new activities. However, in comparing the amount of information carried by my little Zen Garden, NetSuite for one medium sized business is more like a Zen Garden of a few million hectares.

Google is Stretching Itself Too Thinly

I am starting to wonder if Google isn't stretching itself a little thin. With interest, I noted other people who are starting to wonder if indeed Google is rather stretched: according to this discussion in Webproworld, Google supplies over 91 services to the public, most of them unpaid, that is, free to the public. Similar to Xodigo, the person discussing Google in Webproworld, I am afraid I do not find many of Google's searches producing as relevant search results as they used to. Unlike Xodigo, I cannot prove any findings on that matter, it is just that after I have completed a Google search, many times I then go to another search engine as Google has not satisfied my need of information. On going to MSN or Yahoo, I often find that I do get the information I required, or even A9 sometimes has a much better range of search listings to satiate my need for information.

Since Google established the Google Blog Search, and most of the blogs that once used to be included in Google have been separated out, it seems that Google has lost its key organizer which once provided the meat of information Google carried. Go to Yahoo and search for this blog (Notes from a Fast Company) and you do at least see a reference to this blog. BlogPulse has "Notes from a Fast Company" registered in its blog and this blog also has spawned some discussions indirectly and which BlogPulse carries the connections. Go and look in Google for information related to NetSuite and what you find are a bunch of old articles from 2003, 2004 & some in 2005 about NetSuite in USA but little here in Australia even though we have had our fair share of articles about NetSuite in Australia.

So what does all this mean to NetSuite Australia? What does it mean to the writer of this blog? And what does it mean to our readers?

My opinion, and I am going to give you my opinion as I control what is said on this blog (and dear reader if you don't want to know my opinion you may as well turn elsewhere now) is that an employee of a Fast Company, and any employee of a Fast Company, needs to understand the Internet and how it is developing. An understanding of the Internet means knowing how individuals can contribute to the development of information on the Internet, how it can be used to deliver services, both free and paid, how the world of blogs work and where the divide is between professionals who use blogs and businesses that use blogs to advertise in an advertorial manner and where news blogs and news sites come into the picture. One should also know the way in which each search engine interprets the Internet and presents an edited list of sites when certain search terms are used. There are many other aspects of the Internet we could also elaborate, however, what I have outlined in sufficient to make my point. By knowing the Internet and how this world of information and services is being constructed a Fast Company employee then has an understanding of what potential the Internet offers a company such as the one for which the employee works.

So back to Google -- the company that wants to organize the world's information. Can any company take on a brief as wide as that and deliver properly on all aspects? I doubt it. The history of companies worldwide is that when a company works on too many fields of endeavour, eventually that company either falters on all endeavours or shines on some and is overburdened with the others and eventually either dies as a company or sells of those aspects that are a burden.

That is why at NetSuite we have a very focussed goal -- to provide a complete service of all the software a small to mid-sized company needs to operate. And, oh, by the way, we will be the first ones to tell you if your particular company is not going to be serviced well with the software in the way it is structured today.

Why On Demand Services Remove The Need for Backups

Let me shock you -- I have not done a backup of any of my work for the last six months. Now before you put me in the reckless category, let me tell you why. When I work on NetSuite, all my data does not reside on my little computer -- it is all stored in the data bank or database underlying the NetSuite applications. When I need a Word Processor, I do not usually use Microsoft Word, I use Writely and when I save my work it is saved in the Writely database. And when I write emails, I use the Gmail service where every email I have ever received and sent in the last year is stored.

SO when I was reading in The Channel Insider about a company called Global Data Vaulting I really has to ask myself whether in fact I would need such a service. In the article it gives as an example of Murray Smith from OneCoach whose laptop seized up -- but Global Data Vaulting saved the day as they had a complete backup of Murray Smith's computer. Now that might seem to be a good thing for Murray -- but personally I do not keep any data of any significance on my computer for two reasons.

First, I work from more than one computer and everything I work on is using on-demand applications that store my data in reputable storage facilities and backup that data regularly and have a maze of computers to hold my data and everyone else's data. It is like a bank -- I do not hold any significant cash in my pocket -- I keep it all in the bank or investments etc. NetSuite holds the majority of my data and work, and Writely holds my documents and so on. When I work from any computer anywhere in the world I have my work available to me.

Second, the computers I use are all on the Internet full-time and are at risk of having data-loggers, spywware and all manner of nasties. So I keep nothing of significance on my computer and every day maintain a watch using spyware removal and spyware watchers. Now if anything does happen to my computer -- I lose nothing and I do not need a backup service.

A backup service is what every good on demand application provides you with. NetSuite is no different here. Your information is secure -- my information is secure on NetSuite. I am predicting that services like that in Canada -- providing backup services on demand -- are not going to be with us very long.

How Firefox 1.5 Works with NetSuite

So Mozilla has announced Firefox 1.5 and what a great browser it is. While I have been using Firefox on my desktop before this, since downloading the new version I have been using it exclusively. In the previous Firefox 1.0.6 there were some pages of NetSuite that were a little mis-organized, but in this new version it is just terrific.

Now because of the amount of spyware I found on my desktop the other day, I have seriously been considering changing my operating system from the current XP. Looking at the situation, I believe that I can operate as well as I am currently doing using a version of Linux. And what is more Firefox 1.5 is produced for various versions of Linux as well.

Seriously, this is what I see is part of being a Fast Company -- a Company that can change browsers and even operating systems and still be able to function just as well. If the current operating system is too expensive for each computer in a Fast Company, then computers can be changed, operating systems can be changed and the company continues without missing a beat.

Secondly, here we must also consider what we are doing when connecting to NetSuite and using this software to run our company. What we are doing is akin to plugging into the electricity network. When we obtained the services of an electrician to wire our home or office up, we fully intended to connect to the electricity service so that we could power our appliances. This is exactly what we do when we plug into the NetSuite Service, we are fully intending to use this service to power our company-wide communication and recording services.

Your company and my company are not really interested in the software called NetSuite -- what we are interested in is getting a service that can power internal communication and business recording. Now it should not matter if we get that service delivered into a Microsoft Browser or a Firefox browser, or delivered via Linux or delivered by XP. It just needs to work and get those communication and business recording jobs done.

Being free to move and not be tied down to a huge investment in a proprietary system that only works with a particular tools -- such as Lotus Notes or something else like that -- is not what a Fast Company needs. A Fast Company needs to be flexible so that decisions can be made and changes can occur in hours and not months or years. This is part of being a company of today.

We Are The Winners

In every business war of supremacy, onlookers and even customers are often the winners as the giants battle it out to be the top ranking company in a particular sphere. Take for example the search engine war between Google - Yahoo - Microsoft. In this example, as reported by Search Engine Watch we have in July 2005, Google with about 46% of all searches, Yahoo with about 22.5% and Microsoft with around 12.6% of all searches. What this means is that people - like you and I - have chosen to search using Google, or Yahoo or Microsoft of all three at times -- perhaps is you are like me.

Now what are the giants doing when battling for your eyeballs and mine? Sure their servers are screaming along with us searching and searching. But what they are doing is thinking of the next thing, building some more, making sure they are ahead of the other contenders in bring new features, making search simpler and so on. Now as long as these giants don't forget to continue their good service, the great thing is that you and I are the winners in such a contest -- because regardless of who wins, we get new ways of searching, new things to play with and new ways of working.

That is what it is like here at NetSuite. We are in a tussle for leader of this space -- the space of on-demand software. There is Salesforce.com, Netsuite and others. Perhaps I am not representing it right -- there are others -- but Netsuite is really the only one with a complete solution for front and back office solution through an on-demand means of delivery. However, the hotter part of the battle is for CRM where Netsuite and Salesforce both are seeking the same customers.

It is because of the competition that customers are winners. On Monday I am going to think through this idea a little more to see how we are the winners. Have a good weekend.

This Is the Online World of Flexible Computing

Flitting across the Internet from blog to blog as I do at least once a day, I found Evhead's Ten Rules for Web Startups. First of all, we need to recognise this guy's record. The co-founder and CEO of Pyra (the originator of Blogger -- the system in which this blog is being published) and which was bought by Google. He is now the CEO of Odeo a startup in San Francisco. Second, we need to look at his credentials in blogging having written this blog "Evhead" in blog form since 1999. There was one remark he made in the first of his rules that really hit me:

Focus on the smallest possible problem you could solve that would potentially be useful. Most companies start out trying to do too many things, which makes life difficult and turns you into a me-too. Focusing on a small niche has so many advantages: With much less work, you can be the best at what you do. Small things, like a microscopic world, almost always turn out to be bigger than you think when you zoom in. You can much more easily position and market yourself when more focused. And when it comes to partnering, or being acquired, there's less chance for conflict. This is all so logical and, yet, there's a resistance to focusing. I think it comes from a fear of being trivial.

"Focus on the smallest problem you could solve that would potentially be useful." Now lets look for a moment at blogger. Who would have thought back when Blogger was started that it would be a major location of thousands of people's thoughts? Blogger is a great little on-demand tool where I can publish my thoughts for today, or publish anything I want to publish each day. And what a great tool for Google to purchase -- many thousands of advertisements show on Blogger sites, and I dare say many millions of dollars are made for Google because of this little tool called Blogger.

There are two things that attract me to Blogger as a tool to produce my daily tome: first, it is an on-demand tool that I can sign-up for and start using at a time when I want; second, I don't have to read a manual to understand how to use it -- it is relatively simple to use if you have been using online tools for some time. Actually this is not unique to Blogger, but rather a characteristic of on-demand tools.

I use NetSuite everyday as well. It is great to use if you have been using online tools. Many of the processes that are in Blogger are to be found in NetSuite. If you know how to use Blogger, you know how to do many things in NetSuite. And by the way you will also know how to use GMail (Google's Mail Program) which is also an on-demand tool as well.

Gone are the days when I lugged a laptop around with me everywhere. There is no need for that now. All my data, my personal documents, my email, everything I work on is on the web. I can access these on-demand tools from anywhere at anytime. Whether it is at a hotel where I go to the business center there and use a computer, or at home, or at work, or even the other side of the world, everything I work on is on the web. This is the world where it will not matter what device you use to access the web, you will be able to access the tools you need for work.

NetSuite is not unique in this -- there are so many tools that are on-demand. I named a couple of them but there are others: how about Writely.com which is a wordprocessing center and document sharing system.

So working across the Internet with data available online and therefore available anywhere you are is so refreshing and makes one's working life so flexible -- I am glad I work for NetSuite because going back to any company that ran only proprietary on-site systems would be a killer for me.

The system NetSuite provides is so good -- I would like you to try it -- and if I could I would have built a little window where you could personally try it. But as I don't have those skills and there is not a programme to let me do that with point and click, the bext way I can do something like this is to invite you to a personal demonstration. Here is an invitation for you, why don't you click on this link and I will personally set up for you a demonstration of just how easy it is to use NetSuite. It just so happens that NetSuite is the only full service on-demand business suite in the world -- that is what is unique about it. But in that uniqueness, it is also one of the many online on-demand services that heralds the new world of flexible computing.